Human Capital Management

Investing in competitive benefits, development opportunities and wellbeing initiatives and building a culture to fuel employee success.

Click through to learn about our 2025 impact in action. For detailed human capital management data, please see our 2025 data table.

Our Approach

We are one of the largest U.S.-based private sector employers, with 133,030 employees¹ across 51 countries. Merit, capability and performance have long been cornerstones of our advancement philosophy. As we’ve evolved toward a more market-based culture, we continue to demonstrate our commitment to our employees' success through well-paying jobs, competitive benefits, robust development programs and a strong culture rooted in purpose and professional excellence. This cultural evolution is enabling our people to compete at the highest levels while remaining deeply connected to our shared mission and values.

Attracting and Recruiting Talent

Our efforts start with attracting and recruiting top industry talent through:

People Analytics Capabilities: We analyze trends through executive insights, compensation views, return-on-investment metrics, office presence information, and workforce, attrition and movement data to inform decisions related to talent attraction, hiring and retention.
Data-Driven Marketing: We leverage data insights to identify and engage key job-seeking audiences for the skills we need and drive them to our careers website, where they can directly apply for jobs.
Hiring and Promotions: At AT&T, we have always had a policy to hire and advance employees based on merit.
Onboarding: We aim to provide best-in-class new-hire experiences to help ensure job readiness and continued engagement. This includes job-specific trainings and learning resources, with a focus on continuous improvement, to set new employees up for success.
Internships: We offer a variety of internship and developmental programs to provide outstanding individuals with real-world experience in, and pathways to, careers in telecommunications.

Delivering Competitive Compensation and Benefits²

We provide competitive compensation, are committed to pay equity and regularly review and adapt compensation to help ensure fair practices that keep us competitive and in line with the market. We also deliver benefits that meet all U.S. state and national requirements, and which can be personalized to employees’ varying needs. This Total Rewards package is crucial in attracting, retaining and motivating employees, and we pledge to remain competitive and in line with the market. Through it, we prioritize holistic wellbeing by creating opportunities for employees to advance their emotional, financial, physical and social health, wherever they are on their journey.

Emotional Wellbeing

No-Cost Mental Health and Coaching Resources: Professional, confidential assistance, offered through our Employee Assistance Program (EAP), for employees and their families looking for mental and emotional health support or coaching. Employees and their families can access up to 16 no-cost visits with a licensed counselor or coach per year. If care extends beyond this, all providers are in-network for all self-insured health plans. We also provide resources to help employees build their resilience and emotional intelligence.
Expanded Onsite Behavioral Health: Opened a new Health & Wellbeing Center in El Segundo, staffed with a behavioral health therapist to expand access to onsite mental & emotional health support for our people. An additional 18 mental health support locations are scheduled to launch across the U.S. in 2026 as we pioneer this new model in our industry.
Empathy Platform: Bereavement support, including counseling and practical help with administrative tasks, accessible to all beneficiaries of MetLife group life insurance.

Financial Wellbeing

Engagement Opportunities: Educational workshops, events, videos and discussion forums for employees regarding financial wellbeing.
Health-Related Finances: Flexible spending accounts, health reimbursement accounts and/or payroll deductions for designated employee groups, as well as company contributions to lifestyle wellbeing and health savings accounts.
Retirement Plans: Various retirement vehicles offered, including defined-benefit for certain employees and/or defined-contribution plans. All full-time U.S. employees are eligible for a 401(k) savings plan with a generous company match. As participants in AT&T savings plans, employees can choose from a range of investment options with varying risk tolerance levels to assist in their retirement needs, with some restrictions. Savings plan participants have access to an investment advisory service with two levels of service: free online tools or fee-based professional account management with an adviser.
On-Site Financial Support: Dedicated support provided in two AT&T locations, Dallas and Atlanta, for financial planning and education on AT&T retirement plans.

Physical Wellbeing

CarePlus Supplemental Benefits: A program that covers many experimental and expanded services rarely covered through traditional health plans.
Virtual Primary and Urgent Care: A program that provides access to no- or low-cost virtual care for employees and family members enrolled in medical coverage. Our virtual care network of providers helps our employees and their families access high-quality physicians anytime, regardless of where they live and work.
On-Site Health and Wellness Care: For our headquarters employees, we offer access to an on-site Health and Wellness Center where they can receive primary care or consult with a behavioral therapist, chiropractor and physical therapist at a time convenient for them.
Centers of Expertise: These specialized programs deliver high-quality, cost-efficient and member-supported care for a variety of medical areas. Programs include coverage and guidance for cancer, fertility, digital physical therapy, cell and gene therapies, elective surgeries and sleep conditions for participating employees and their partners.

Social Wellbeing

Caregiver Time Off: We offer up to three weeks paid time off for management employees to be there for loved ones for qualified situations.
Family Planning and Support: We provide 24/7 virtual support for all employees for pregnancy, postpartum, loss, adoption/surrogacy and return to work. Management employees can take five consecutive business days off for pregnancy loss/miscarriage. We provide maternity rooms for nursing mothers and other benefits, including access to services that ship breast milk for nursing mothers during work travel. Egg freezing services, surrogacy and adoption support are also supported.
Paid Parental Time Off (PPTO): We offer up to 12 weeks paid time off for new parents, including adoptive parents. Time may be extended for birthing mothers when paired with applicable short-term disability benefits. PPTO benefits are also available to a portion of bargained employees.
Paid Time Off (PTO): Management employees receive 23 or 28 days PTO (based on length of service). Employees also receive sick time, separate from PTO and as needed, up to seven consecutive calendar days. Bargained employees receive PTO, holidays and sick time as outlined in negotiated agreements.
Family-related Leave: All employees are eligible to take family-related leave. The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides employees unpaid, job-protected leave for those unable to work because of their, or their family member’s, serious health condition. Leave may be taken all at once, or may be taken intermittently as the medical condition requires.

Promoting Overall Wellbeing with Good Call

Through our company-wide Good Call initiative, we encourage employees to focus on healthy micro-actions, from establishing good sleeping habits to leveraging additional AT&T benefits. This initiative promotes the four areas of wellbeing above, emotional, physical, social and financial. The message is shared across all business levels through various communication channels, such as on-site signage and during annual benefits enrollment.

Encouraging Open Communication

Through our intentional listening strategy, we engage with our employees and gather information that directly shapes our workplace and culture. We deploy various surveys, including:

Annual Employee Survey: Our most comprehensive survey, in which all employees can provide their thoughts. Results are shared across AT&T, enabling leaders who receive at least five responses to create and drive targeted initiatives based on feedback.
Life Cycle Surveys and On-Demand Surveys: Surveys to assess sentiment at key career milestones, such as seven-day and 30-day new-hire/new-to-role surveys and exit surveys. They enable us to get a sense of how employees respond to similar questions at different career stages. On-demand surveys are also created in partnership with different business units to gather feedback on specific events or topics.
Compliance Survey: A survey, hosted periodically by our Chief Compliance Office, to gather feedback on ethics, honesty and integrity. Employee responses are confidential, with results aggregated to protect identities so people feel safe raising key issues.
Community Engagement Survey: Taken with a representative sample of the workforce, this survey seeks to understand employees’ awareness of and engagement in AT&T’s corporate responsibility initiatives. We also conduct virtual and in-person focus groups to elicit employee feedback on community engagement at AT&T.

Survey insights go all the way up to AT&T’s CEO to promote visibility and encourage that employee feedback be taken into consideration when developing and facilitating employee engagement opportunities.

Integrated Leader Model

Our success depends on embracing a market-based culture that puts customers first, acts with urgency and works as one team. The Integrated Leader Model defines the key leadership behaviors that help us grow, stay agile and deliver exceptional customer experiences in a fast-changing environment:

Serve Customers First: Focusing on real customer needs and market-based data to deliver value and meet customers where they want, keeping AT&T competitive and customer-centered.
Move Faster: Staying focused on our strategy while being flexible and agile to deliver results quickly. We prioritize simplifying processes and empowering others to keep pace with change.
Act Boldly: Taking ownership with confidence, embracing risks and learning from setbacks. It’s about speaking up, using data to challenge the status quo and pushing for wins with grit and perseverance.
Win as One: Working together across teams with a shared vision and enterprise mindset. We put the company’s goals first, communicate openly, build trust and hold each other accountable to succeed as one team.
Develop Talent: Continuously growing and improving skills and perspectives. We set a high bar, provide honest feedback, lead from where we are with transparency and inspire others to learn and improve every day.

By living these behaviors every day, we focus on what matters, adapt quickly to change and hold ourselves and each other accountable for results.

Our Culture

To connect all people to greater possibility, we've built a culture where merit, capability and performance drive advancement and success. We recognize that cultivating a workforce with distinct backgrounds and abilities strengthens our competitive edge and enables the innovation needed to serve our customers and communities. Building this culture is an ongoing journey that requires each of us to embrace change, take ownership in our roles and commit to new ways of working together.

Creating a Sense of Belonging

Our work to foster belonging is supported by our Employee Groups, highly engaged, voluntary, employee-led groups that bring people together, promote professional development opportunities and serve their communities. Our Employee Groups support a range of causes, including organizing Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics (STEAM) Fairs, collaborating with AT&T Connected Learning Centers™, distributing laptops to underserved communities and hosting digital literacy and cybersecurity programs in schools and retirement homes.

Employee Groups help foster our inclusive culture by bringing employee ideas, their perspective of key issues and the voice of our customers to the table. They also play a key role in helping us deliver better customer experiences, supporting the company to problem-solve and, ultimately, creating better solutions that help us meet our business objectives. All Employee Groups are open to all employees.

Where We Work

We believe in the value of connection and our employees coming together in person to fuel greater collaboration and innovation. Being together strengthens our culture and the effectiveness of our teams in serving our customers. All U.S.-based management employees receive one of two designations, office or virtual, based on their work and the outcomes their teams are driving. The majority have an office designation, with virtual employees primarily being in roles that do not require high levels of collaboration.

Several of our union contracts also allow for union-represented call center employees to apply to work virtually.

Prioritizing Learning and Development

We support continuous employee growth from day one. We help people build meaningful AT&T careers by developing leadership, technical and digital competencies through a range of development opportunities. We emphasize a personalized approach with mentorship, training courses, tuition reimbursement and over 50 nano-degrees and partner degree programs.

In support of our Integrated Leader Model, we equip our people with expertise to strengthen our talent pipeline, advance AT&T’s culture and drive business impact. We deliver leading-edge learning and development experiences and develop an expert pipeline of talent through enriching experiences and developmental opportunities.

Frontline Training

We deliver frontline training to business units based on their functional needs. For example, we offer Elevate, a tailored solution and consolidated global leadership training program for new managers across the company. This comprehensive training was designed to enable customization to cater to varying business needs, addressing challenges faced by frontline organization managers.

We also partner with LinkedIn Learning, as well as public and private universities, to offer leadership courses, career courses and tailored educational opportunities.

We regularly evaluate our programs to ensure they effectively support employees in building and retaining the knowledge needed to do their jobs well. We use a variety of methods and data sources, including learner feedback after training, as well as pre- and post- assessments to measure knowledge transfer and behavior change for larger projects. We assess the supervisors and performance results for our new hire classes vs. the incumbent audience. All are utilized to identify and implement necessary improvements. For instance, we log employee online training sessions through our Learning Management System platform to help measure trends in employee performance.

Opening the Door to Career Development

As well as company-wide initiatives and resources, we deliver programs tailored to specific development needs:

Leading with Distinction Program: This large-scale leadership development program is delivered to AT&T’s entire executive and general management population. Leaders strengthen their understanding of the AT&T corporate strategy, financial foundations and leadership capabilities needed to lead. The program serves to align all leaders and drive a high-performance culture. To cement learning foundations, a continuous learning component is delivered over the course of the year.
Management Development Program: Five months of continued development for selected high-achieving, high-potential frontline employees as well as first and second-level corporate employees. Incorporates job shadowing, group collaboration, monthly keynote sessions and an in-person, three-day training. Topics include executive presence, financial acumen, agile thinking, project management, succession planning and networking. Level 2 participants can also earn an Agile Leadership Certificate from Cornell University.
Technology Development Program: Spans 24–36 months and aims to transform science, technology, engineering and math graduates into highly skilled professionals. Participants work on high-priority projects in areas like 5G/fiber technology, big data and full-stack application development. Most participants enter as first-level managers and are promoted to next-level roles upon program completion.

Nurturing Continuous Growth

We promote ongoing development, setting clear work expectations and providing regular feedback, coaching and performance evaluations so employees understand how they are doing and can identify opportunities for improvement and future growth. Our review process blends peer, manager and direct-report feedback. Employees can also use a 360-degree feedback survey, aligned to our culture behaviors. Supervisors are encouraged to give direct reports feedback at least monthly and to hold an annual career discussion, which may or may not occur during formal reviews.

Employees can also leverage Career Intelligence, an online tool, to explore potential new roles within AT&T. Employees can search job profiles, explore required skill sets and how their current capabilities align, and understand potential progression routes within job families. Through our Career Hub site, employees can add existing skills to their employee profile and identify skills they’re interested in developing. With this insight, the Career Hub recommends networking opportunities, as well as skills to develop further to advance their careers.

Respecting Employee Unions

We have one of the largest full-time, union-represented workforces in the United States. Across all international and U.S. operations, approximately 43% of our global employees, and 53% of U.S. employees, are represented by unions. We have been building strong union relationships for nearly 100 years and remain dedicated to cooperating with our unions, namely the Communications Workers of America, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

We value union-represented employees and work to create competitive contracts for them that provide and protect high-quality working-class jobs, competitive wages and leading benefits. We also look to deliver meaningful development opportunities. For example, together with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, we have developed training and apprenticeship programs.

For additional details of our collective bargaining activities and union interactions, see the AT&T Employee Relations webpage.

Employee Works Councils

AT&T has an active Employee Works Council (EWC) that acts as an umbrella organization for individual Works Councils (WC) across EMEA. This EWC has 51 members and 24 active local WCs plus Health & Safety committees and unions. Social elections are regularly organized, any new formally designated unions are recognized by the company and employees are free to self-nominate and join unions with no discrimination from the company.

The International Labor Organization team, which sits within the Labor Relations team, is responsible for monitoring the labor environment and managing relationships with EWCs and Human Resources (HR) Country Managers, who manage the relationship with local work groups.

Human Capital Management Governance

Board of Directors Human Resources Committee: Oversees HR matters and meets several times annually to discuss compensation decisions. The full Board receives annual reports on compensation for top executives as well as periodic updates on other human capital issues.
Chief Human Resources Officer: Leads our HR organization and all aspects of our culture and human capital evolution.
Benefits Team: Responsible for managing and developing AT&T’s employee benefits program. The Chief Executive Officer and HR senior leaders may also be responsible for benefits plan adoption and amendment decisions depending on the magnitude of financial impact.³
Talent & Development Team: Leads AT&T’s talent strategy, encompassing learning and development, talent acquisition and employee engagement.
Labor Relations Team: Bargains with union representatives on AT&T’s behalf, including developing competitive contracts for union-represented employees.

Impact In Action

Our 2025 Impact in Action

Throughout 2025, we remained focused on onboarding the best industry talent and delivering the best employee experience. During the year, our careers website was visited by nearly 4.7 million users, resulting in over 824,000⁴ applicants. In total, we made more than 15,700⁴ external hires during the year.

Understanding Employee Needs

In 2025, 73% of AT&T employees responded to our annual engagement survey to share their thoughts on the company, the culture and their work. The survey covered professional development, employee engagement and employee wellbeing, tracking negative and positive perspectives. Results were shared with all leaders, resulting in nearly 31,800 action plans to address the following common themes:

Increased career development and aspirations
Improved processes and systems
Health and wellbeing programming
Increased employee belonging

In addition to our annual survey, we leveraged Joyous, an AI-driven tool for surveying frontline employees, as an additional avenue to engage frontline employees in action planning. Joyous gathers feedback through short, conversational, one-on-one chats at scale and uses AI to transform those insights into detailed, practical action plans. This shortens the time from asking for feedback to taking action, giving leaders a clear view of the improvements employees say will make the biggest difference so they can prioritize meaningful changes that matter to their people and drive measurable impact for the business.

Creating More Opportunities for Professional Growth

During 2025, we invested over $89 million in training, with more than 147,000⁵ employees completing 5.8 million hours of training, roughly 40 hours and 41 courses per employee.⁶ This included 1.7 million hours of new hire training and 318,000 hours for advanced learning programs. Throughout the year, we invested nearly $9.9 million in tuition assistance. Over the past five years, AT&T tuition reimbursement has helped nearly 12,000 employees attain higher education.

As a result of employee feedback collected in 2024, we invited vice presidents and officers to co-facilitate in-person Leading with Distinction sessions in 2025. We also introduced a hybrid approach to empower continuous virtual learning at all times.

AT&T launched Leadership Champions, a virtual open-access development program available to all employees and expanded pilots of training opportunities such as Emerge, the Management Development Program and Gateway to Leadership.

Strengthening Performance Management

99% of salaried employees, entry-level through vice presidents, with at least three months of service, received a formal performance appraisal in 2025.⁷ Additionally, nearly 111,300 management employees engaged in the feedback process in connection with formal midyear and end-of-year check-ins.

Advancing AI for Career Development

During 2025, we launched the Ask AT&T Academy to help employees understand and apply Ask AT&T, our internal generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tool, in their daily work, and 20,000 employees received a license to Microsoft Copilot, unlocking trainings on how to use Copilot across Microsoft 365’s suite of applications. Learn more about our AI trainings and guidelines around responsible AI use in our Responsible AI issue brief.

Improving Processes and Systems

In 2025, based on employee feedback, we launched The Employee Center, a centralized hub for internal resources, platforms and policies employees access most. It’s home to the new HR OneStop, as well as technology and workplace services platforms, procurement and supplier resources and internal company news.

Advancing Wellbeing

Through our company-wide Good Call initiative, we reinforced our focus on mental and emotional wellbeing through messaging campaigns, site visits and rewards programs. We engaged frontline employees through in-person presentations and programs such as our Employee Group Conference and Serve Customers First Week events. As a result, preventative health visits among frontline groups increased by 4% since 2024.

Supporting Parents

Based on employee feedback, we introduced a 10-week summer camp through our partner Bright Horizons to help parents balance work and childcare needs over the summer when kids are out of school. The program was available for children ages 4 to 12. More than 580 children participated, with parents giving it a 97% satisfaction score.

Continually Strengthening Union Relationships

Since 2022, we have reached 21 collective bargaining agreements with unions. In 2025, we negotiated three agreements which, collectively, represented 9,000 employees. They included:

Alaska Contract: Negotiated a year in advance, this agreement increased the contributions the company makes to health care.
Southwest Contract: As a result of this negotiation, beginning in 2026, bargained employees in the southwest will have more choices of medical plans and benefits.
IBEW Contract: AT&T came to an agreement with the IBEW to transfer customer care employees from the wireline to the mobility contract.

Encouraging Greater Engagement

During 2025, nearly 30,000 employees participated in at least one Employee Group. In 2025, we underwent an exercise to consolidate our Employee Groups from 26 to 12 to strengthen their impact, promote increased collaboration and membership engagement and better align with business goals.

More than 17,000 employees from 18 countries attended our 2025 Employee Group Conference, themed “Connect & Grow,” including 1,200 in-person and 16,000 virtual participants. In addition to debuting our new Employee Groups during the conference, attendees highlighted the opportunity to expand their professional networks, appreciated the transparency and candor from executive leaders, and left with a renewed sense of purpose, actionable strategies for personal and career development, and a deeper understanding of how innovation—including AI—will shape AT&T’s continued transformation.

Employee Recognition

In 2025, we launched Applause, a revamped platform for employees around the world to recognize their peers for their hard work and collaboration. In its first year, employees leveraged Applause with nearly 133,000 peer-to-peer recognitions.

2025 Data